Shepard Fairey OBEY Sinking Liberty 2017 Signed #/400 Damaged Stencil Series
Edition of #/400|18" x 24"
About the work
About This Piece
Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art
Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Sinking Liberty — Damaged Stencil Series
2017 Offset Lithograph · Numbered Edition of 400 · Hand-Signed & Numbered · One of Eight in the Set ★ Originally Sold ONLY as a Complete 8-Print Set — Individual prints from the Damaged Stencil Series are scarce on the secondary market and rarely surface alone. Tied to Fairey's largest solo exhibition, "DAMAGED" at Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles. What You Are Getting
This is Shepard Fairey's Sinking Liberty — the most viscerally iconic and emotionally direct work in the 2017 "Damaged Stencil Series." Printed in deep black ink on cream Speckletone paper, it is part of a set of eight prints released together in December 2017 to accompany Fairey's largest-ever solo exhibition, DAMAGED, at Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles. The series was sold exclusively as a complete 8-print set: individual prints were never available separately at retail, making single examples genuinely scarce on the secondary market.
The composition delivers its message with the clarity of a manifesto: the Statue of Liberty — America's most universally recognized symbol of freedom and welcome — is submerged to her waist in dark, churning water. Her torch remains raised above the surface, flame still burning, in an act of defiant persistence. Concentric ripple rings radiate outward from where her figure meets the waterline, rendered in Fairey's bold stencil style as precise white arcs against the dense black field — the water not splashing but settling, as though the sinking has been happening slowly, for some time. Below the waterline, the submerged lower half of her figure and plinth dissolves into a dense, dark photographic collage layer: architectural fragments, natural forms, and layered ephemera pressed into the murk.
The upper field surrounds her with Fairey's signature collage vocabulary: botanical engravings, the OBEY gear-star emblem, damask patterns, and fingerprint-like textured forms that dissolve into the atmospheric background. The composition's upper-left corner retains the characteristic ragged, fraying border of the Damaged Stencil Series — torn-edge printed design elements that simulate the look of a wheat-paste poster pulled from a wall, giving the print the urgency of street ephemera and the permanence of museum-quality offset printing simultaneously.
Print Details Artist Shepard Fairey (OBEY) Title Sinking Liberty Series Damaged Stencil Series (8-print set) Year 2017 (December release) Medium Offset lithograph — single-color black ink on cream Speckletone paper Colors Black on cream/off-white — monochrome (not multi-color) Size 18" × 24" (46 × 61 cm) Edition Numbered edition of 400 — hand-signed and numbered in pencil Key Visual Elements Statue of Liberty submerged to waist in dark water · Torch still raised and burning · Concentric ripple rings at waterline · OBEY gear-star emblem · Botanical engraving collage · Damask background patterns · Characteristic damaged/torn border edges Damaged Borders Ragged, torn-edge borders — intentional printed design elements, not paper damage Signature Hand-signed by Shepard Fairey in pencil (verso or lower margin) Exhibition "DAMAGED" — Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, December 2017 (Fairey's largest-ever solo show) Publisher Obey Giant / Studio Number One Original retail $160 for the complete 8-print set (sold out at release) Edition Number
Understanding the Visual Language
Of all eight prints in the Damaged Stencil Series, Sinking Liberty carries the most immediate symbolic weight. The Statue of Liberty needs no editorial caption — her meaning is globally legible, her sinking universally understood as a statement about what America was losing in the period that produced this work. Fairey's formal decision to keep the torch above the waterline is the print's most important detail: this is not a dirge but a warning and a challenge. The flame survives. Whether it continues to do so depends on who is watching and what they do about it.
The concentric water ripples are rendered with a precision that elevates them beyond mere surface detail — they are formally perfect, almost mandala-like in their regularity, creating a visual tension between the stillness of geometric pattern and the violence of what it represents. The OBEY gear-star emblem appearing in the background upper right operates as both signature and commentary: the machinery of the brand, and by extension the machinery of all brands, all institutional symbols, all manufactured icons of nationhood, cycling on indifferently as the figure they are meant to represent submerges.
The botanical collage layers and damask patterns in the background — recurring across the entire series — here take on additional resonance. Nature continues, decorative pattern persists, while the symbolic architecture of the nation sinks. The print was created in the first year of the Trump administration, in the same moment as the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, travel bans, and the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. Sinking Liberty is its era's most distilled visual statement, rendered in Fairey's most stripped-down, urgent formal register.
The Complete Damaged Stencil Series — All 8 Prints
This is the final print in the Damaged Stencil Series — its most iconic image. The full set of 8, each 18" × 24" offset on cream Speckletone, edition of 400:
· Natural Springs — Woman with headscarf holding dripping lotus; oil derrick warning symbol · Peace Guard 2 — Armored figure with flowers in gun barrel · Learn to Obey — Boy scout figure saluting a dollar-sign sun; USA propaganda aesthetic · Freedom of Choice — Authority figure with skull badge; "Choose: Silence or Fear — OBEY" · Proud Parents — Family portrait with subversive layering · Printing Press — Burning gear with star inscribed; circuit-board schematics; classical bust · My Florist Is a Dick — Satirical consumer culture critique ★ Sinking Liberty — Statue of Liberty submerged to waist; torch still raised; concentric ripple rings; OBEY gear-star emblem (This Print)About the DAMAGED Exhibition Fairey on the exhibition and series concept: "DAMAGED is an honest diagnosis, but diagnosis is the first step to recognizing and solving problems. I definitely think that art can be part of the solution because it can inspire people to look at an issue they might otherwise ignore or reject." The December 2017 exhibition at Subliminal Projects — Fairey's own gallery space in Los Angeles — was his most ambitious solo show to date, assembling work that directly addressed the political climate following the 2016 election. Sinking Liberty functions as the series' closing statement: after the environmental warnings of Natural Springs, the institutional critiques of Learn to Obey and Freedom of Choice, and the meditation on media machinery in Printing Press, this print delivers the series' most direct reckoning with what all of it means for the American democratic project.
About the Artist — Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Born 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina, Shepard Fairey studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and launched his career with the Andre the Giant Has a Posse wheat-paste campaign — one of the first viral street art movements — which evolved into the global OBEY brand. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, MoMA New York, LACMA, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His 2008 Obama HOPE poster remains one of the most recognized political images of the 21st century. Sinking Liberty belongs in that same lineage of instantly legible, politically charged image-making — an artist who has spent three decades proving that the most powerful messages travel in the simplest forms.
What Is Included
- Original Shepard Fairey Sinking Liberty offset lithograph, Damaged Stencil Series, 2017
- Hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey
- Hand-numbered in pencil — numbered edition of 400
- Single-color black offset on cream Speckletone paper — unframed, stored flat
- Gauntlet Gallery digital provenance documentation
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More Shepard Fairey & Street Art at Gauntlet Gallery We carry an ever-rotating selection of authenticated Shepard Fairey prints — political editions, environmental works, floral patterns, letterpress prints, and large-format silkscreens — alongside Banksy, Death NYC, and signed music collectibles. Looking for other prints from the Damaged Stencil Series? Message us — we may have additional titles available. Add us to your Saved Sellers to be notified when new Fairey inventory drops. Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art & Collectibles Since 2012 · View All Listings
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Few contemporary artists have bridged underground culture and institutional recognition as effectively as Shepard Fairey. Emerging from skate and punk subcultures with the original Obey Giant campaign, he built a visual language rooted in propaganda aesthetics, bold iconography, and political commentary.
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